Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/CANNES: YouTube Chief Executive and the first Google worker, Susan Wojcicki, has stepped down from her role at the tech giant started in her garage nearly 25 years ago, she said in a personal update on the video-sharing platform on Thursday.
Wojcicki, 54, would be replaced by her deputy Neal Mohan, an advertising and product executive who joined Google company in 2008.
The change of guards comes as YouTube’s advertising revenue fell for the second quarter amid intense competition for viewing time with short-form video services like Facebook and TikTok Reels and streaming services like Netflix.
Mohan, a Stanford graduate, was appointed chief product officer at YouTube in 2015. He has focused on building YouTube Shorts and subscription offerings in the role.
Vice president of Google
He spent nearly six years at DoubleClick, the company Google acquired in 2008, and later served for about eight years as vice president of display and video advertising at Google.
The most prominent woman in tech, Wojcicki, said that she would focus on “family, health, and personal projects” and plans to take on an advisory role at Alphabet.
She was senior vice president for ad products at Google company and became the CEO of YouTube in 2014.
Analyst at Insider Intelligence, Paul Verna, said, “It strikes me as the forced exit caused by YouTube’s under-performance in recent quarters. What is less clear is whether Mohan, who’s was a relatively low profile to date, has the leadership qualities to get YouTube back on track,”
Alphabet shares have barely changed for the day, less than 1 percent after the news.
